Missing Girls, Education, and the One Child Policy William Leith Alumnus

Vassar College Digital Window @ Vassar Senior Capstone Projects 2014 Missing Girls, Education, and the One Child Policy William Leith Alumnus Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone Part of the Growth and Development Commons, and the Social Statistics Commons Recommended Citation Leith, William, "Missing Girls, Education, and the One Child Policy" (2014). Senior Capstone Projects. 271. http://digitalwindow.vassar.edu/senior_capstone/271 This Open Access is brought to you for free and open access by Digital Window @ Vassar. It has been accepted for inclusion in Senior Capstone Projects by an authorized administrator of Digital Window @ Vassar. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 William Leith Senior Thesis Vassar College Departments of Asian Studies and Economics Missing Girls, Education, and the One Child Policy Delineating the Effects of Maternal Education on Son Preference Under the One Child Policy 2 TABLE OF CONTENTS I. Introduction………………………………………………………………….………………………………………………3 II. History of the One Child Policy……………………………………………………….………………………………5 III. Literature Review and Data………………………………………..…………………….……………………………8 IV. Models of Sex-Selection………………………………………………...………………..……………...…………….11 V. Empirical Results……………………………..……………………….…………………………...…………………….17 VI. Sources of Error and Topics for Further Research…………………………………..…………………….28 VII. Conclusion………………………………………………………………………………………..…………….…………..30 Appendix: Definition of Variables…………………………………………………………….………………………….….34 Appendix: Regression Tables………………...………………..………….………………………….………………………..36 Acknowledgments……………………..……………………………………………………………………………...…………...40 References……………………………………………………………………………..………………….…………………………..41 3 I. Introduction Over the past three and a half decades, China has seen a surge in the ratio of male to female newborns. A biologically normal sex ratio at birth calls for around 105 or 106 boys for every 100 girls (Sen, 1990), and before 1985, Chinese parents gave birth to about 107 newborn boys for every 100 girls, a figure that falls within the normal range for sex ratio at birth. In the years following the enactment of the One Child Policy, which dictated that most Chinese couples only have one child or face steep fines and other legal penalties, this number has climbed dramatically. Between 2005 and 2010, China’s sex ratio at birth averaged 117 boys for every 100 girls born– an alarmingly high figure. Economic incentives and cultural preferences favoring boys, coupled with the constraints on childbearing opportunities imposed by the One Child Policy have resulted in a startling reduction in the number of women in China today. While the One Child Policy has had an undeniable negative impact on China’s deficit of female babies, the significant reduction in the number of girls born in China since 1980 also owes a great deal to the widespread adoption of ultrasound technology in China, which has given prospective parents the tools necessary for determining the sex of an unborn child. Sex-selective abortion accounts for an overwhelming majority of China’s excess males (Wei, Li, Hesketh, Liu, and Zhang, 2005), and increased access to the requisite technology has significantly widened the gap in the number of newborn boys and girls (Chen, Li, and Meng 2013). Although the One Child Policy sounds as though it constitutes a highly rigid legal framework with regard to fertility, it is a much less dictatorial policy than its name suggests. In an effort to reduce high male birthrates and to appease groups who are especially resistant to fertility policy, China’s national government, as well as provincial and municipal authorities, has 4 instituted a number of exceptions to the One Child Policy, allowing certain parents to have additional children, though these efforts have met with little success. These exceptions most frequently apply to poor, rural families, who exhibit high rates of son preference relative to the rest of China’s population. Often, rural families are allowed to have a second child provided that they have already had a daughter. Furthermore, financial disincentives for additional fertility create an environment where well-off families are more likely to be able to afford additional children. Since selecting for the sex of an unborn child may require bribery or expensive procedures such as sperm-sorting, wealthy families are better situated to engage in sex-selection. Thus, second children in China are even more disproportionately male than their older siblings, with 62% of births following a daughter being male in 2000 (Ebenstein, 2010: 92). This paper examines the determinants of China’s increasingly unbalanced sex ratio at birth with a special focus on maternal educational attainment. First, I provide a brief summary of the One Child Policy, focusing on some particulars of its implementation and justification. I then give a brief survey of economic and demographic literature relating to the effects and determinants of sex-selective behavior in developing countries, especially in China. A theoretical discussion of education and son preference follows, including an outline of a model of the effect of education on sex-selective behavior in India and a model of fertility decision making in the context of the One Child Policy. Since India and China are similar in both their levels of development and degrees of son preference, the first of these models offers useful perspective on the mechanics of son preference in developing countries in general. The second of these models focuses more on the decisions of individuals in the context of the One Child Policy, though it does not detail the effects of education on these decisions. 5 This paper attempts to reconcile the conclusions of these two models through empirical analysis, demonstrating a positive correlation between maternal education and son preference in Chinese families following the institution of the One Child Policy. In spite of the restrictive policy environment fostered by the One Child Policy, women have a great deal of agency in decisions regarding their own fertility, and educational attainment is one of the primary determinants of how these decisions are made. This indicates that the One Child Policy effected a shift in the factors influencing Chinese parents with regard to sex-selection, as education has become a significant predictor of son preference in Chinese individuals who have had children since 1980. II. History of the One Child Policy The Chinese Communist Party began its efforts to curb China’s unchecked population growth in the 1960s. After famine claimed nearly 30 million lives between 1959 and 1961, the fertility rate in China climbed to alarmingly high levels during the following decade. While the national government made no explicit restrictions on the number of children couples could have, it initiated a campaign to promote birth control in an effort to lower national fertility. This ended with the dawn of the Cultural Revolution in 1966, and the government ceased to manage fertility rates until 1970. Chinese fertility policy in the 1970s took a similar tack to the short-lived attempts of the 1960s, though in a more coordinated fashion. Instead of dictating how many children couples could have, the government strongly encouraged parents to have no more than two children. In fact, reductions in China’s national fertility rate were more substantial in the 1970s than in any other decade, as the total fertility rate (TFR) fell from 5.8 to 2.2 (Liang, Lee: 2006: 14). Increased female participation in the labor force, and a number of acute shortages of food and other 6 essentials had undeniably significant impacts on the fertility rate during this period. Nonetheless, as the 1980s began, China’s government took an even stronger stance against population growth. The One Child Policy may be the most ambitious example of demographic engineering in human history. Its official implementation in January of 1981 1 marks yet another turning point in the composition and growth of China’s population. Much of the theoretic justification for these measures stems from the resurgence of Malthusianism in the late 1960’s and early 1970’s. Works such as Limits to Growth (Meadows et al.: 1972) offered numeric justifications for their dire predictions about the consequences of unchecked population growth in the developing world (Hartmann: 1995). As China turned its sights toward Zhou Enlai’s “Four Modernizations” 2 in the late 1970’s (at that point under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping), China’s high rate of population growth loomed as a major obstacle to its economic prosperity. Justifications for the One Child Policy applied this “Malthusian orthodoxy” of early 1970’s control theory and applied it in broad, sweeping strokes. While politicians touted a number of numeric projections used to illustrate the severity of China’s population problems as unassailably correct, reliable demographic statistics were simply unavailable in China at that time (Greenhalgh, 2003). In the absence of alternate research or projections, the One Child Policy appeared to be the only way to avert certain disaster. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, the One Child Policy has brought about further reductions in the rate of population growth in China. Incidentally, its implementation coincides with one of the most remarkable periods of economic growth in any country in recorded history. The natural growth rate of China’s population has fallen

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